JB/539/441/001

Click Here To Edit

I dont know whether I told you or not of my discovery with respect to bodies
floating down a river with the stream. I will at any rate endeavour
to give you some account of it now and of the manner in which it suggested
itself to me. While I was in Siberia at Nighi Taghil, there
were some barks of different sizes built for the transporting of iron
down the river there to Tobelsk. The people in authority there
happened one day to have occasion to speak of the advantage with respect
to expedition that the larger bark would have of over the smaller one.
This appeared to me to be a false idea of their's the more so when
upon a stricter enquiry I found they neither sailed nor rowed, but
receiving the whole of their motion from the current itself used
an oar at the head &at the stern only to guide them.

I reasoned with myself as I had been accustomed to find other people
and authors reason on the subject reason. Anything body floating in a
running water, when first set off receives an impulse from the water
till having acquired the same velocity with the current itself
is no more struck by it, but becomes as it were a part of that
current and like the quantity of water which it displaces
[occupies the place of] can move with no other velocity than
precisely that with which the current itself moves. On this account
a great body & a small one be the weight & figure what they will

Identifier: | JB/539/441/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 539.
Date_1	1783-10-19	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	539	Main Headings
Folio number	441	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	Correspondence	Number of Pages
Recto/Verso		Page Numbering
Penner	Samuel Bentham	Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number
Box Contents